baby activities

With summer in full swing, we will all be doing lots of water play over the next few months. Water play and exploration is one of the classic open-ended play experiences that can provide hours and hours of engagement for your baby as they figure out how this stuff called water works. There are lots of ways to make your baby’s time with water a rich experience full of discovery and learning. My company, eebee’s Adventures, is offering a free video download that models lots of great filling and spilling adventures. To download yours (or pass it along to friends) just follow this link: http://eebee.com/waterplay/sk.html

While on duty watching your little one in the pool or at the beach, look for the hidden secrets your child is discovering while exploring water. Those seemingly simple pours or splashes probably involve some serious thinking and problem solving that we adults don’t readily see. And it is a lot of fun to speculate about what is going on inside that little mind.

Take my daughter Whitney at the pool in the videos below, when I slowed down and really observed her play, there were lots of really interesting nuggets of thinking I could notice. This first video shows her transferring water back and forth between cups:

We take for granted the transferability of water. That of course when you pour from one cup to the other, the same amount of water is going to show up in the new cup (eg the law of conservation). However, our little ones do not take this for granted and want to experiment again again to test what will happen.

There is a lot of stuff they find fascinating that we view as trivial. Here a serious interest in “Overflow”:

Of course, we don’t pour additional water into a cup that is full but our toddlers will do it again and again. They are discovering the personality of water. It overflows down the sides when they continue to pour in the cup.

Lastly, what happens when another cup is pushed down instead of another — aha! –Displacement occurs:

While they are running their experiments in understanding water, they are also exercising all sorts of thinking, communication, social & emotional and physical skills. Again, this is how the richest learning works. In the context of figuring out something they care about, and show an interest in, they challenge and exercise all the budding skills of development from the physical skill of twisting their wrists to pour the water to the cognitive skill of trying out, remembering and employing the tactic that delivers the desired result. So try to be as creative as you can in supplying tools and encouraging play extensions that come to mind based on what interests your child. Over the summer, there will be lots of opportunities

The debate on parenting and educational best practices has been brought to a fevered pitch with Amy Chua’s views in Tiger Mother and documentary film hits Race to Nowhere and Waiting for Superman filling parent discussions. The problem is that the proposed solutions in these various media couldn’t be more diametrically opposed. Race to Nowhere condemns the “dark side of America’s achievement culture” calling for no more homework while Amy Chua claims America does not have an achievement culture at all but a lax and loose culture that indulges kids and enables them to waste time. A strict demanding Chinese style Tiger Mom is her solution. Waiting for Superman confirms the mess in our public schools and then seems to side with Amy Chua by elevating KIPS and SEEDS charter schools as solutions, which expect a lot more from every student and insist on more classroom time, more one-on-one tutoring and more homework to achieve results. With all the mixed messages, what are parents to think?

I personally believe the current debate does not help us make sense of what direction we parents should take. Amy Chua’s ideas about high expectations and assuming that a child is strong – - not fragile – - cannot be easily dismissed. Nor can the high test scores of Eastern cultures (See NYTimes article) . Yet neither can we dismiss the western or American advances in the cognitive sciences that highlights the diversity and complexity of each human mind. It indicates that minds really are all different, each possessing a different profile of strengths and able to contribute to the world in diverse ways. And it is not just about our academic profile; it is about creativity, emotional intelligence, social intelligence and practical intelligence as well as qualities like happiness, joy, compassion and wisdom. Our world is swimming in an immense diversity of professions, roles and responsibilities; yet our schools and cultures narrow intelligence and assessments down to reading, writing and arithmetic. (see Ken Robinson’s TedTalk)

The key to parenting best practices is to tune into your child’s unique mind and profile of strengths and help them become who they truly are. Assume their mind and profile is a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Our job as parents and educators is to bring out those brilliant gifts by finding great ways to engage that mind in meaningful ways — with activities, projects, and education that challenge and cultivate that richness. We can have faith that are kids are wired to live life well. They want to master their world and win hard fought skills, knowledge and character traits. Yet, we adults in their lives do have a major role to play in helping them to pursue their dreams, to see that they can be, do and have anything, if they put their mind and concentrated effort towards it.

Contrary to some child-centered beliefs, it does not happen by letting children do whatever they want. Amy Chua is right about the fact that watching TV the amount of hours the average American child watches is not going to help. How do we parents provide the right experiences and right expectations to satisfy our universal desire to have our children thrive in a changing unpredictable world.

We need the debate to shift to ideas for how we identify what our children are interested in, what is their unique mind like and how do we provide the kind of opportunities that will strengthen their unique profile. In other words: How do we best provide an individual-centered education? Even parents of infants and toddlers have a huge role as the first and most important teacher. Most of the posts in this blog give concrete examples of how to get down on the floor with your child, enter and see the world through their eyes, observe what they are interested in and developmentally able to do, respond with appropriate exchanges and invitations to extend the play and exploration. It is never too early to get to know your child and cultivate their budding abilities.

As our toddlers develop more social awareness, they soon begin seeking approval from those important to them. Toddlers want their efforts to be rewarded with attention, excitement and approval. Praise, the more the better but you want it to be descriptive of what was accomplished. Instead of the frequent “good job”, try to describe what happened:

“Wow, look at how tall your block tower is. You placed 1, 2, 3 blocks in that tower, congratulations”. Start early and be explicit about how effort leads to specific results that get your attention and praise. Read more…

Baby thinking or ideas don’t start as full blown adult thinking with sophisticated models of some concept that has an integrated past, present and future. Instead our babies start with simple isolated schemas for actions they see happening in the world. Our babies can see patterns in their own and other’s behavior. They see which actions garner affection and approval; which, disapproval and anger. They see how the physical world works- hitting this button causes this thing to pop out. They picture relationships and possibilities with these images creating an inner world of thought. It is this ability to understand and keep in memory “patterns” that lets a toddler meaningfully explore and categorize the world and begin to solve problems long before they speak words. She is beginning to construct these series of images in mind. These models are the most deliberate and conscious productions of the baby mind.

While learning to use objects, our babies imitate how adults interact with them. This imitation becomes internalized and our baby begins to develop a specific schema for interacting with a specific object. Researchers call this mental schema a “sensorimotor concept”. For example, Whitney observed us adults using a brush numerous times and at 10 or so months could imitate that “brushing” schema:

Even though whitney would use the back side of the brush and almost never actually have an actual effect of combing her hair, She enjoyed repeating the concept of brushing. As whitney bangs the brush against her head and attempts stroking it, she develops a sensorimotor schema or concept for the brush that combines visual, tactile, and kinesthetic representations of brushing. These non verbal ideas are the foundations for thought and reason!

Babies develop early math and numeracy skills by experiencing concrete actions on their world. Take simple paper tearing. One big piece of paper can be torn into 2 pieces, 3, 4, 5 — from the one piece come many pieces—like magic to a baby. We take it for granted but to babies this is exciting stuff. Watch Whitney’s squeal with each additional “division” of paper:

It is these early intuitive experiences with sequence, number & numeracy that provide the foundation for later abstract mathematical symbol systems. It is the same with more and less of stuff; babies notice the difference. More ice cream for the sibling can bring about a temper tantrum. We can help our babies reflect on these logical and numberical aspects of their world by drawing attention to them and narrating a bit as I attempt in the video.

Once our babies start to sit up, this milestone opens a whole new range of exploration. Their hands free up and whatever they can get them on, they want to explore and manipulate. Here Whitney, gets her hands on one of Dad’s shoes — grabbing the shoelace, bringing it to her mouth, flapping it around, tugging on it til the shoe moves. These explorations help her “figure out” the shoe or any object for that matter:

As mentioned last post, one of the first steps in the development in logic is a baby’s realization that he or she can make something happen. As our babies’ day-to-day experiences accumulate, they begin to notice patterns in their world. They begin to organize and integrate the world into spatial and sequential categories. They explore the features of different objects and learn to “figure things out” — what makes a shoe a shoe, a ball a ball, etc. Bring a bunch of varied objects into their reach and enjoy the show.

Our little ones don’t start their logic careers with the 123s, shapes, and colors: instead, they figure out that when they do something, it can make something else happen in the world. So if they give you a big smile, you will give them a big smile back. This is early cause and effect and babies are discovering this by 3 months of age. They are learning this across all aspects of their life. When in a crib or on a playmat, if they kick the bell it will make a sound. In the video below, my daughter Whitney, discovers that when she makes her legs hit the ball it moves and makes a sound:

By three months, our babies demonstrate that they can remember that they know that doing one thing makes another thing happen and show that they can make it happen–again and again. With Whitney’s ability to coordinate vision, reaching and kicking, something even more dramatic is happening to her mind. She is learning that she can make interesting things happen AND can remember them for short periods of time! Coordinating eye, hand and foot movement is a remarkable achievement but it is the feeling of mastery at making things work that truly promotes our babies’ conceptual and logical development. The more opportunities we offer that enable them to “make things happen”, the stronger this critical foundation for logic and learning.

Another early language skill that we all experience and hold precious during that first year is babbling. Our babies’ babbles are some of the first experiments with sounds that eventually turn into language. In the video below, Whitney creates a “DaDaDa” pattern of babble and repeats it in a sing sound babble. After a couple repetitions, she adds a new ending to the sign song and repeats that:

These babbling patterns are voice structures that serve as a foundation for speaking sentences at a later date. Whitney has even taken a basic voice structure, the “dadada” and added some slight variations to the end. In this way she invents the idea that a core sentence can have different endings and thereby slightly different meaning. Although her babble has no meaning, it has a linguistic structure that prepares her for finding ways to express herself.

Sounds, coos and babbling are the important foundations for later language skills. The ability to even control her mouth positions to produce a Da or a Ga or a Ma is no small feat. Another aspect is the turn taking nature of the babbles if you simply repeat the babble sounds you here your baby making, you will see how they give you space to finish your turn and then they read that cue and then take their turn. This is important skill for back and forth conversations. There are lots of rich language skill building opportunities to support your budding linguist.

As discussed last blog post, there are lots of opportunities in the 0 to 3 period to work on language development. Even before verbal “Conversations” (post 7/7/10), we can help our little ones love books and the reading experience. Early on it does not have to be about the words on the page and naming objects as much as just creating a fun interactive experience with mom or dad. Babies love to hold the book and turn the pages and this should not be overlooked as important early literacy skill. Watch Whitney’s important excitement in picking out and bringing me a few books and then orienting the book so that she can turn the pages:

While reading try to make the experience interactive by going off the page. Books do not have be read linearly from front to back. Make it interactive. There are lots of body parts books that are just about naming the body part like hand, face, foot; instead of just labeling try to help your baby “DO” or use the body part. Babies learn best by doing so get them engaged and interacting with you:

What kind of conversations are you having with your little one? At the youngest ages, there is amazingly rich non-verbal dialogue but when it comes to talking we adults are doing most of it. Our toddlers do show a distinct progression in how they share their ideas. From one and a half to two yrs, toddlers usually have very simple and isolated ideas. For example, in the video below, Whitney expresses that she would like me to “sit down” next to her while she eats lunch and then tries to communicate that she does not want her usual nap after lunch:

This conversation is characterized by isolated ideas without much fluency and really no narrative at all. Between 2.5 and 3 years, our toddlers begin to connect their isolated islands of understanding into more comprehensive narratives across events and time. These Narratives go further than just words to describe things. Narratives have a dramatic through line with actors who have desires directed toward goals which take place in a context. Below is an example of Whitney’s new ability with conversation and narrative stories:

Whitney was now beginning to understand how one event leads to another (a storm can create a mess); how ideas operate across time (If the mess was created yesterday; today we need to clean it up); and how ideas operate across space (If the street sweeper can clean up the street, it could also clean-up our driveway). Ideas can now be used to explain emotions (I don’t like that noise from the machines; that noise makes me mad) and for logical thinking (that is fantasy instead of reality). This period is a monumental stepping stone toward mature, rational thinking. You can have conversations on just about anything at anytime and anywhere, so engage your toddler and see what they have to say.

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